It seems that every day over the past two years there are plenty of news stories covering the strain hospitals are facing in staffing shortages and the impacts from a global pandemic. Emergency medical services (EMS) are also dealing with their own similar issues across the nation. Many of these critical facilities and services are located in the proximity of nuclear power plants in which previous agreements were established to provide treatment, patient transportation, radiation monitoring, and decontamination in the event of a patient-generating event within a nuclear power plant’s emergency planning zones.
On 17 February 2022, Dr. Asha M. George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on
Biodefense, testified as an expert witness before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs at a hearing on addressing the gaps in the nation’s biodefense and level of
preparedness to respond to biological threats. In 2015, the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense released
its first report, A National Blueprint for Biodefense, to warn that the biological threat was rising and
to inform the government that the nation was insufficiently prepared to handle a large-scale biological
event. When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, many of those findings proved to be true.
Article Out Loud Shootings, acts of violence, crimes, abuse, suicides, overdoses, and other incidents and tragedies are increasing nationwide. Cities across the nation saw a surge of homicides in 2020 […]
Since the spring of 2020, variables such as mistrust of government leaders, anti-maskers, and economic concerns complicated COVID-19 community response. The Cynefin framework is a sensemaking theory in the social sciences to create a framework for emergency managers in large-scale events.
School crisis response plans come in a variety of formats. Although the structure may vary, the content must include the essentials for the plan to be usable and effective. […]
Imagine an important grant application deadline approaching next month, delaying the submission for
a couple weeks, but then a critical incident happens (perhaps, something like a pandemic) that diverts
attention for weeks, months, or much longer. The routine tasks that require action are not performed in
a timely manner, and the deadline for that grant application is now gone. Developing some small habits
like prioritizing would have significant effect on productivity and effectiveness of response and
recovery efforts for a future crisis.
Collaboration between public entities and private companies is essential to prepare for disasters. However, current partnerships can be formal and cumbersome to the point of detriment, or impromptu and do little to achieve their goals. This unmet need to find appropriate partnership mechanisms could be addressed by the Harvard National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI)’s Predictable Surge framework, a model presented in Domestic Preparedness Journal in August 2019. It aims to inform an emergency manager’s understanding of the response ecosystem and productively engage potential private partners. This model has been further developed through a pilot with the Providence Emergency Management Agency (PEMA), located in Providence, Rhode Island, in the summer of 2021.
One common sentiment that can hold people back from thinking outside the box is, “That’s how it’s
always been done.” Lessons learned and best practices are critical components of disaster preparedness
efforts. However, no matter how many lessons are learned and best practices are discovered, the pursuit
for new lessons and even better practices should never end. In this January 2022 edition of the Domestic
Preparedness Journal, a new year begins with four new ways of looking at disaster preparedness.
The proliferation of climate change, political strife, and general societal divisiveness is changing the nature of the work of emergency managers. The (ongoing) COVID-19 global pandemic, devastating hurricane and wildfire seasons, tenuous political situations, and broad unrest impact local communities in significant ways. Emergency managers are those who officials trust to lead response and recovery to this growing list of emergencies and disasters. They facilitate multi-agency responses to complex incidents, often serving in silence while providing critical backbone services.
When incidents are catastrophic and/or happen in compromised environments, complexity can increase
rapidly and dramatically, compromising response objectives and resulting in catastrophic failure. The
cost of these failures is measured in destruction and human lives, making even minimal reductions in
capabilities untenable. A rapidly changing environment requires that the modern emergency manager is
capable of quickly understanding community needs, including the needs of underserved populations and
traditionally underrepresented groups.
It seems that every day over the past two years there are plenty of news stories covering the strain hospitals are facing in staffing shortages and the impacts from a global pandemic. Emergency medical services (EMS) are also dealing with their own similar issues across the nation. Many of these critical facilities and services are located in the proximity of nuclear power plants in which previous agreements were established to provide treatment, patient transportation, radiation monitoring, and decontamination in the event of a patient-generating event within a nuclear power plant’s emergency planning zones. 
On 17 February 2022, Dr. Asha M. George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on
Biodefense, testified as an expert witness before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs at a hearing on addressing the gaps in the nation’s biodefense and level of
preparedness to respond to biological threats. In 2015, the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense released
its first report, A National Blueprint for Biodefense, to warn that the biological threat was rising and
to inform the government that the nation was insufficiently prepared to handle a large-scale biological
event. When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, many of those findings proved to be true. 
Article Out Loud Shootings, acts of violence, crimes, abuse, suicides, overdoses, and other incidents and tragedies are increasing nationwide. Cities across the nation saw a surge of homicides in 2020 […] 
Since the spring of 2020, variables such as mistrust of government leaders, anti-maskers, and economic concerns complicated COVID-19 community response. The Cynefin framework is a sensemaking theory in the social sciences to create a framework for emergency managers in large-scale events. 
School crisis response plans come in a variety of formats. Although the structure may vary, the content must include the essentials for the plan to be usable and effective. […] 
Imagine an important grant application deadline approaching next month, delaying the submission for
a couple weeks, but then a critical incident happens (perhaps, something like a pandemic) that diverts
attention for weeks, months, or much longer. The routine tasks that require action are not performed in
a timely manner, and the deadline for that grant application is now gone. Developing some small habits
like prioritizing would have significant effect on productivity and effectiveness of response and
recovery efforts for a future crisis. 
Collaboration between public entities and private companies is essential to prepare for disasters. However, current partnerships can be formal and cumbersome to the point of detriment, or impromptu and do little to achieve their goals. This unmet need to find appropriate partnership mechanisms could be addressed by the Harvard National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI)’s Predictable Surge framework, a model presented in Domestic Preparedness Journal in August 2019. It aims to inform an emergency manager’s understanding of the response ecosystem and productively engage potential private partners. This model has been further developed through a pilot with the Providence Emergency Management Agency (PEMA), located in Providence, Rhode Island, in the summer of 2021. 
The proliferation of climate change, political strife, and general societal divisiveness is changing the nature of the work of emergency managers. The (ongoing) COVID-19 global pandemic, devastating hurricane and wildfire seasons, tenuous political situations, and broad unrest impact local communities in significant ways. Emergency managers are those who officials trust to lead response and recovery to this growing list of emergencies and disasters. They facilitate multi-agency responses to complex incidents, often serving in silence while providing critical backbone services. 
When incidents are catastrophic and/or happen in compromised environments, complexity can increase
rapidly and dramatically, compromising response objectives and resulting in catastrophic failure. The
cost of these failures is measured in destruction and human lives, making even minimal reductions in
capabilities untenable. A rapidly changing environment requires that the modern emergency manager is
capable of quickly understanding community needs, including the needs of underserved populations and
traditionally underrepresented groups. 